The Motherless Daughters Club

Isn't that just the saddest title? The Motherless Daughters Club? The name brings me a titch of pain, to be quite honest with you. But....it is an accurate, literal descriptor of me.

In hopping on Twitter and trying to become an MBC advocate, I have begun to follow many brilliant minds, one of whom is Marie Ennis-O'Connor from Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer. In corresponding with her, she sent me the link to this article, written by Nancy Hicks:
 
The Motherless Daughters Club

And my breath was taken away.

"There is a huge hole in my life where a mother — and now a maternal grandmother for my children — should be. I still wish I had a mother to call when something good happens, when something bad happens, or when nothing at all has happened, just to talk about the day."

I soaked in every word. Someone was speaking my language. I felt a connection across the internet, across continents. There are people like me. While I choose to believe my mom is with me (I swear, the other day I had the strangest feeling that she was riding in the car with me), I know I am, physically, a motherless daughter. 

Yesterday was my 35th birthday, the first without my mom and the second without my dad. Last year, my father had just passed away in January, I was pregnant and my 34th birthday was spent in an emotional haze. It was an awful day. Yesterday, my husband gave me some perspective in a funny story about my mom that he told me at 6:00 in the morning. He shifted my perspective from mourning to smiling. It was a decent day. I felt mom with me. I coped. And I am back at it again today.

"When asked how much of her life her mom’s death affected, Edelman says all of it. Everything. It affects everything. When a mother dies, a daughter grieves, and then her life moves on. She will feel happiness again. But the missing her, the wanting her, the wishing she were still here — that part never ends."